


Harry Potter and the Batesian Mimicry

by elumish



Series: Creatively Maladjusted [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Slytherin Harry Potter, Wizarding Politics (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-18
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:35:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26454988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: He thinks, I could have been Tom Riddle. He doesn’t say that to her, but he does tell her that it’s not her fault. She doesn’t believe him.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy & Harry Potter, Hermione Granger & Harry Potter & Ron Weasley
Series: Creatively Maladjusted [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/539758
Comments: 50
Kudos: 324





	1. Summer I

**Author's Note:**

> I thought a lot about what to do with this story, given JKR's truly awful statements and views towards trans people. I understand and respect anyone who doesn't want to engage with Harry Potter in any form because of it.
> 
> What I've decided is that I won't let her ruin for me what I love about the world of Harry Potter. So my Hogwarts, and my wizarding world, is full of love and respect for trans people, as I am.
> 
> This book will be written in a combination of full scenes and summary, as the end of the previous story was. It will be broken up by season. If you don't want to read something written like that, then don't. I've warned you. I don't want to hear about it.

Harry wakes up to someone pounding on his door, and he has a sudden adrenaline-filled moment of thinking that he’s back at the Dursleys, that running away was all just a dream and Aunt Marge is coming today and he’s going to have to listen to her talk about his parents like they were useless drunks instead of heroes.

And then he opens his eyes and sees that he’s at the room in the Leaky Cauldron, and relief hits him so hard he drops back down on the bed, all of the panic running out of his body. But someone is still knocking, he realizes, and he pries him out of bed and hurries over to the door to see who it is.

When he gets the door open, it’s to see Caster standing there looking pale-faced and dishevelled, hand raised to keep knocking.

“What the fuck, snakelet?” she demands, then shoulders inside and pulls the door closed so she can grab his upper arms and shake him, just a little. “What the absolute  _ fuck  _ were you thinking? The Minister almost had-- _ I _ almost had a conniption when I heard you had run away.”

Harry ducks his head, feeling bad that he worried her. He hadn’t thought of that. He hadn’t thought she would know. “Sorry.”

Caster shakes her head, pulling away to drop down into the chair in the corner of the room. Harry stands where he is, feeling awkward and ungainly. “What happened? Did something happen with your family?”

“They, um.” Harry feels stupid, suddenly. “I blew up my aunt, slightly.”

Caster’s eyes widen. “Blew up like…”

“She sort of inflated and flew out of the house.”

“So we’re not going to hear about a suspected IRA bombing in Surrey?”

Harry shakes his head.

“Good. Don’t scare me like that.”

“It wasn’t the aunt I live with,” Harry hurries to add. “It was my Aunt Marge, my uncle’s sister.”

Caster frowns at that, then gestures for Harry to sit at the edge of the bed. He perches there and looks down at his knobby knees, wishing that he was wearing something less massive than one of Dudley’s old shirts over some boxers. 

“And how, exactly, did you inflate your aunt?”

Harry shrugs. “It was an accident.”

“You’re a little old for accidental magic.”

Harry’s shoulders hunch, and he curls in on himself a little. He knows he’s not the world’s greatest wizard, but he wishes he could manage to stop doing things that were freaky even by wizarding standards. “I don’t know. She was saying things about my parents, and I just got so--so mad, and I wanted her to stop, and then she was inflating and floating away, and...well, I left.”

Caster’s lips thin, and Harry doesn’t know if she’s mad at him or not. Her voice is very level when she asks, “What was she saying about your parents?”

“That they were, you know, drunks and useless and that my mom was a bad egg and my dad was a wastrel and that they had--they had bad blood.”

“I see.” Caster lets out a very long, slow breath. “I understand the accidental magic now. And this was all your uncle’s sister?”

“My aunt and uncle have said most of that before. It was just--Aunt Marge was just--” Harry can’t figure out how to explain why what Aunt Marge said bothered him so much more than Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon, not without going over the whole thing, and he really doesn’t want to do that.

Caster seems to be able to see that, because she nods and says, “Okay, snakelet. Okay. Why don’t you--I’m going to take you to my flat for the time being, until we can figure out something more permanent. Do you have anything that you need to pack up?”

Harry looks around the room, but other than his wand, basically everything is still jammed in his suitcase. “You don’t have to--”

“Oh, I very much do.”

It doesn’t take that long to get out of the Leaky Cauldron; Caster transfigures a sheet into a cloak with a hood for Harry to wear so the few people who are still awake can’t see his face while they leave, and then they go to what she calls an Apparition Point and she apparates them to an alley in what looks like a different part of London.

“Apologies in advance for how shit my flat is,” Caster says as she leads him into an apartment building. She did something to make his trunk light enough so he can carry it up the stairs with one hand, though he feels like someone will notice that it’s not as heavy as it should be.

Harry looks around the staircase, and it’s not as nice as the Dursleys’ house, but it doesn’t look that bad. “Do you...not make enough money?” He has no idea how much money she makes. He feels like he should probably know that.

Caster laughs. “Don’t worry about that, snakelet. I make plenty of money. I’m just saving to buy a place of my own, and I wasn’t expecting guests.”

He feels guilty at that, that she’s being put out by him being there. “You really don’t have to--”

Caster stops on the stairs, so abruptly that Harry nearly runs into her; she turns around and steps down on to the same step as him so she can look him in the eye, though she’s still taller than him by an irritating amount. “Snakelet.” Her voice is almost kind. “You have to stop. Stop telling me that I don’t have to help you. Stop telling me that you’re causing me trouble.”

“Sorry.”

“Stop apologizing.” She pushes his hair back from his face. “Children aren’t burdens for needing a place to stay and someone to look after them. Even if I nearly had a heart attack when I heard you had run away.”

Her hand has been on his forehead for too long, and Slytherins are physically affectionate, but after not having anyone touch him all summer, it’s too much. Harry twitches away, patting his hair back down over his scar. Caster frowns at that, but she doesn’t say anything about it.

Instead, she turns and keeps going up the stairs. They stop two floors up, Caster unlocking the door with the tap of her wand instead of a key. “This is a wizarding apartment,” she explains, “so we can use magic anywhere in the building, as long as the exterior door is closed. There are a few of these in London.”

Once they’re inside, she taps the door with her wand again. Harry isn’t sure if that locks it or does something else, but she looks satisfied with whatever it does.

“You can put your trunk down wherever,” she says, striding into the flat. It’s not that big, but he spots a couch and a couple of chairs around a low table, and there’s a half-closed door to what looks like a bedroom. It’s a mess in a way that would make Aunt Petunia swoon, which makes Harry like it even more. But Caster starts frenetically putting things away with waves of her wand and muttered spells, sending books and papers flying into piles in the corner of the room.

“You hungry?” she asks. “I have...something in my kitchen, surely.”

Harry shakes his head. “I’m good, really.”

“Okay, good.” Caster looks around, then nods decisively. With a spell Harry doesn’t recognize, she transfigures her couch into a bed, which nearly pushes the table out of place. “You can sleep there tonight, and we can figure this shit out tomorrow.”

\--

Harry wakes up at dawn, or a bit before it, even though he didn’t get to sleep until late; it’s hard to sleep in new places, and he’s been getting up early all summer to do chores. It doesn’t seem like Caster is up, but he figures she’ll want breakfast, so he makes his bed and then heads over to the kitchen to see what she has.

There’s not a lot in her kitchen, but she has eggs and bread--though no toaster--and some beans. He can’t find any sausage or other meat, but he figures this should be enough. Without a toaster, the oven is the easiest way to toast. He doesn’t want to do it under the grill because he’ll have to watch it too closely, so he turns the oven on to 175 and puts a few pieces of bread directly on the grates. They look clean enough, and he doesn’t want to hunt around her apartment to find a sheet pan.

There’s a pan drying on the counter that Harry figures he can cook eggs in, but he wants to wait until Caster is awake so he doesn’t overcook her eggs, so he just gets everything ready, then hunts around enough to find some two plates and some utensils.

He has everything laid out so he can start cooking when the door to Caster’s bedroom opens and she asks, “Snakelet? What are you doing? Are you hungry?”

Harry shrugs. He hadn’t really considered whether or not he was hungry, just that she’s going to want breakfast. 

Caster sighs. “Do your aunt and uncle make you cook?”

Harry turns his back towards her so he doesn’t have to see what her face is doing. He knows his family situation is messed up, but talking about it has never made things better, and he doesn’t know what Caster is going to do about it. It’s not like he’s going to live in her apartment, and he doesn’t have anyone else to live with.

So instead, he asks, “Why were you so upset to hear that I had run away from my home?”

“Oh, for the love of Merlin,” Caster breathes. “You’re not getting out of talking about your family by making me explain to you why it’s a problem that a child ran away from home. We are not having that conversation at six in the morning.”

Harry’s not really sure how he messed up this time, because she really does seem a bit angry with him now, and he doesn’t know if it’s because he made breakfast without her permission or because he ran away and made her worry or if there’s something else going on.

“Shit,” Caster mutters behind him. “Shit, snakelet. Okay, I need to go to work today, and you need to come with me, because I can’t leave you here alone.”

Harry spins around to face her again. “I’ve been left alone loads of time.”

“I can’t leave you undefended, and I can’t guarantee the Ministry won’t track you using magic here, so sticking with me is your only option.”

“Why would I need to defend myself?”

“Oh, I don’t know, in case Sirius Black shows up to try to kill you?” She rubs her face with her hand. “If it makes you feel better right now, until I can explain to you why this is so fucked up, try to remember that my livelihood depends on you being okay.”

Oh yeah. Harry had kind of forgotten that; it’s hard to remember that she’s only in that position because he put her there. She’s so competent that he can’t really imagine her being kicked out of her job just because something happens to him.

“Okay,” Harry says. Then he remembers the bread, which he doesn’t want to burn, and asks, “Do you want me to finish making breakfast?”

“No,” Caster says. “No, just give me ten minutes and then I’m going to take you out to eat.”

“What should I do with the toast?”

“Just eat it. Ten minutes, snakelet. Put on some real clothes, please, in the meantime.”

And with that, she disappears back into her bedroom.

\--

They go to a cafe full of muggles, and it’s a good thing Harry is wearing muggle clothing, even if they’re Dudley’s old cast-offs. Caster looks brilliant in a skirt suit with a sort of giant bow in Slytherin green, which makes Harry smile.

Harry eats eggs and bacon and toast, and Caster drinks three cups of black coffee and stares aggressively at Harry as he eats. But she doesn’t try to stop him from eating, so he cleans his plate, and then she asks, “Are you still hungry?”

Harry could eat more, but he shouldn’t, so he shakes his head, putting his fork down.

“Okay,” Caster says. “Okay, Potter. There’s a reason I’m doing this in a muggle cafe and not a wizarding one. I need you to tell me what is going on with your family. If they’re hurting you--”

“They’re not.”

Caster takes an angry drink of coffee. “I’m trying to help you here, snakelet, but I don’t have a whole lot of power over you. Please work with me here. I don’t know if you know what you look like, but you are  _ so thin _ right now, and you eat like you think someone is going to take the food away from you. Last year you told me that you used to live in a cupboard and that your aunt and uncle locked you up for underage magic.”

“I’m fine. It’s fine.”

“No, it’s not, and you know it.” Caster scowls at him. “Why won’t you let me help you?”

“Because I have nowhere to go.” He realizes he’s shouting at her a little and lowers his voice. “They won’t let me live in the Leaky Cauldron for the rest of my summers, and I can’t put that on the Weasleys, and they won’t let me stay at Hogwarts, so there’s nowhere for me to stay. So they would just send me back to my aunt and uncle, but it would be worse.” Harry looks down to stare at the empty plate. “It’s not that bad, I swear.”

“Fuck.” Caster sucks in a sharp breath. Harry flinches, just a little, and hates that he does. “Fuck,” she says again, softer. “Okay. I’m going to figure this out, snakelet. I promise.”

“How?”

“I do have some connections,” she says, and smiles. 

\--

“You don’t technically need to use the guest entrance,” Caster tells him as they head towards a telephone booth, “having a seat on the Wizengamot, but it’s probably a better idea not to bring you through any of the employee entrances right now. They’re going to check your wand, but they’ll give it back. Just make sure you don’t use any magic in the Ministry, because they actually enforce the Trace in there.”

“I never use magic over the summer,” he reminds her.

“You--ah,” she says. “Right. Merlin, that must be weird.”

It’s not, really--he’s never used magic at the Dursleys, at least not on purpose--but he doesn’t say that.

The telephone booth turns out to be an elevator that opens out into a giant atrium, and without looking up from what looks like a paperback book a bored desk worker asks, “Name?”

“Annabelle Caster with Harry Potter, Holder of the Potter Wizengamot Seat,” Caster says.

The desk worker glances up at them with just the flick of her eyes, then says, in the least interested voice Harry has ever heard, “Welcome to the Ministry of Magic. Wizengamot seat holders can floo in. Have a nice day.” Then she looks back down at her book.

“Thanks,” Harry mumbles, then follows Caster through the atrium. She walks fast, but he just walks as fast as he can and sticks close to her. He hopes nobody recognizes him.

“I can show you the Wizengamot,” Caster tells him when they stop near an elevator bank, “but otherwise I’m sorry to say we’re going to be stuck in my office all day. They probably wouldn’t stop you if you wander around, but there are places you should avoid, especially because you’re not allowed to use magic.”

“That’s fine.” She had him bring some summer schoolwork with him, and he’s kind of looking forward to actually getting some work done. Maybe this way Snape won’t murder him when he gets to Hogwarts.

Caster reaches over and ruffles his hair, and he kind of wants to push her hand away but kind of doesn’t want to, because it’s been so long since anyone has touched him and his skin  _ aches _ sometimes for want of it.

And then she says, “Oh, hi, Arthur,” and Harry looks up to see Mr. Weasley standing next to him, smiling at them.

Mr. Weasley would scare him, except he’s  _ so nice _ , and he never yells like Mrs. Weasley, and Harry has never seen him look like he wants to hit any of the Weasley kids, not even when it came out that Ginny had been tricked by the diary.

So Harry says, “Hi, Mr. Weasley.”

“Oh,” Mr. Weasley says, sounding a little startled. “Good morning, Harry, Annabelle. We were all very worried when we heard you had run away from home.”

“Sorry,” Harry says, and hopes Mr. Weasley doesn’t say he needs to go back.

But all Mr. Weasley says is, “I’m just glad you’re okay. Annabelle, I’ll get you the report you asked for by the end of the day.”

“Thank you,” Caster says, and they step into an elevator, and nobody else says anything to Harry at all.


	2. Summer II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Summer II: The Summary

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I couldn't resist the pun in the summary, sorry)

Remember that it was a seventeen-year-old Annabelle Caster who looked at an eleven-year-old Harry Potter, too thin and scrubbing at their common area, and thought,  _ they will burn down the world for him. _

She was wrong, but that was hardly her fault.

It’s a nineteen-year-old Annabelle Caster who looks at a Harry Potter she knows is being abused and thinks,  _ well, shit _ . She has more power than she ever expected to have, but in any practical sense she has no power over  _ him _ . If he doesn’t want to be saved, she can’t save him.

And she’s  _ nineteen _ . Do you remember being nineteen?

It’s Arthur Weasley who suggests that Harry stay with them for the rest of the summer. It would be good for him to be able to stay with his friends, and that way she won’t have to drag him into work every day or leave him at her apartment alone.

And, he says gently, they still have some of the protections up, from the War.

She takes it to Harry that night, while they’re eating Indian takeaway, and she makes sure to couch it in him being able to spend time with his friends, and not her wanting him gone.

He looks eager, but he also looks wary, like he thinks it’s a trick. He often looks at her that way, when she says things that any normal wizard would understand.

She doesn’t know what abuse looks like, but she can guess.

He agrees, in the end, much to her relief, but not before making her promise to give the Weasleys money for his care. She doesn’t know if they’ll accept it, but she promises to try.

He leaves three days after he arrives, and that night Annabelle lets herself get blind drunk and cry over the boy she pledged her loyalty to at the age of seventeen.

Do you remember being seventeen?

\--

Ginny avoids Harry, the first couple days he’s at the Weasley’s, until he finds her alone in the garden and tells her that she shouldn’t be scared in her own house, and if it’s him she’s scared of then he can leave.

She cries, much to his dismay, but then she apologizes, and he thinks, I could have been Tom Riddle. He doesn’t say that to her, but he does tell her that it’s not her fault. She doesn’t believe him.

They are all works in progress.

The Weasleys try not to talk about Sirius Black around him, but Caster already explained it to him, already explained that Black was his father’s best friend but then gave his parents up to Voldemort and then killed some muggles and another friend to get away.

He did it because he’s from a Dark family, apparently, even though he had run away from that family when he was still in Hogwarts, and gone to live with Harry’s dad’s family. He must have gone back to them. They must have taken him back.

Harry doesn’t think he understands that, can’t imagine betraying one of his friends for the Dursleys.

But if the Dursleys promised they would love him, if they would treat him like an actual son, and feed him the right amount and never hit him and maybe tell him stories about his mom--

He doesn’t want to think he would.

\--

Ron snores when he sleeps, and Harry’s bed was transfigured from some sort of table, and the house creaks and sways at night.

Harry has never slept better.

\--

Severus Snape, on the other hand, has not slept in fifteen years and has no intention of starting now.

He has spent the last week trying to discern whether Lucius Malfoy--a man he truly despises with all his heart--is in any way involved with his wife’s cousin’s escape from prison. He would suspect Narcissa herself, but if she were involved, they would not have realized Black was gone for far longer.

And she would have freed her sister instead, more than likely. Black blood ties tend to run close and unrelenting, unless they are cast out entirely.

He was not close with Regulus, but everyone knew the Black Family Opera with all its many acts. The scandal of the century, to have two blood traitors in a single generation.

Supercilious, sanctimonious twats, the lot of them. At least his mother had the decency to disappear into obscurity instead of making a fuss of finding herself a muggle to fuck. Though she could have done with better taste.

But there is no evidence that Malfoy was involved, or any other of the few remaining Death Eaters Severus is in any modicum of contact with. Karkaroff is too far away and the Carrows are too truly stupid to have even thought of it. Mulciber is smart enough but not connected enough, and Nott is too focused on shaping his son to risk such a thing.

It is wholly illogical for Black to have escaped to kill Potter now, when he is under the protection of Hogwarts. But then, when has anything Black done ever been logical?

\--

Remus Lupin spends the latter half of the summer trying to remember what the fuck he learned at Hogwarts.

He also spends the latter half of the summer turning into a wolf once every twenty-nine days or so, but that’s nothing new.

His own Hogwarts education was a mess of full moons and James-Peter- _ Sirius _ and full moons and full moons and full moons, and he remembers taking classes in the same way he remembers going to Hogsmeade, more as a factual reality than as distinct memories. He knows things that he must have been taught at some point, but--

Well, his curriculum needs a lot of work.

And hopefully in the meantime, while he’s figuring out what to teach a bunch of teenagers, he’ll also manage to figure out how to talk to Harry without falling to his knees and begging for his forgiveness.

\--

Harry writes to Draco when none of the Weasleys are around--rare occasions, but he sneaks out to the garden sometimes--because he knows the Weasleys hate Draco and he doesn’t want them to hate him for liking Draco.

Things are--not good, exactly, not like the beginning of first year, but better, now that Draco has gotten over Harry having all of his letters stolen by Draco’s dad’s house elf last summer. But he seems sad, or scared, or something, and he doesn’t talk about the fact that his dad almost killed all of them with a giant snake, and Harry doesn’t know what to say about it.

So he doesn’t say anything, and he asks about how Draco’s summer is doing, and he talks about seeing the Wizengamot chamber with Caster, and he commiserates about all of the homework they have to do.  _ Twelve pages _ for Charms, and almost as much for Transfiguration, and Professor McGonagall definitely doesn’t like the other houses as much as she likes the Gryffindors.

\--

It is a good summer, away from the Dursleys. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the school year chapters I'll definitely have more scenes or snippets interspersed, there just weren't any other specific scenes I wanted to portray for the summer months


End file.
